The Only One Left I Love
by AnironEndor
Summary: You're lucky. You only won last year. The Capitol haven't had time to kill off those you love. All of these people care about you. You still have all these people left who love you. I've only got one... The only one left that I love...


~.o0 Finnick Odair 0o.~

The scream pierces the air like a whiplash, and everyone is suddenly alert. I glance down to the beach several metres below, where the others kneel in the shallows of the water. Johanna hefts her axes in both hands, looking around for the source of the noise. Peeta is a little slower, but before I even take the time to look at him, his knife has been drawn from his belt and is clutched tightly in a fist. Beetee has no weapon, but clutches his coil of wire, ready to run at the slightest noise. I myself was the fastest, though. My spear was held over my head ready for combat before the others were even on their feet.

I glance at Katniss, still kneeling beside me, spiel in hand, but see no arrow notched to her bowstring. Her hands hang limp at her side, her eyes wide with horror and swimming in despair. The spiel slips from her sweat soaked fingers and hits the ground with a dull thump. Water drips from the gaping hole in the trunk of the tree where the spiel was supposed to go. I stoop to retrieve it, the slim metal tube is far too valuable to loose, but by the time it is in my grasp, Katniss is gone.

"Katniss?" I ask slowly, straightening up and trying to peer through the trees for the path she has taken.

At that point, Peeta looks towards me, and gives a cry of dismay. He starts off up the beach after his fiancée, but Johanna grabs his arm and stays firmly planted with two feet buried in the sand. It takes only one second for our eyes to meet and for us to silently agree on the situation. I go, she stays to protect Katniss' precious Peeta and Beetee (who, heaven help us, is our only way out of here) and we regroup here as soon as possible. We don't want to get separated. Not in these games.

In a second, I am running at top speed through the jungle after Katniss' desperate voice. She is a long way off by now, but I can here her tormented cries.

"Prim!" I hear her scream, "Prim!" And all the while the child's cries and anguish and pain echo after her like a vengeful ghost.

Prim? That's her sister- the one she volunteered for last year. Why would her sister be here, in the arena? Snow can't kill her- the entire nation loves that girl. And Plutarch wouldn't allow it. Katniss will never cooperate if her sister is dead...

As thorny vine lashes out from nowhere, and pain explodes in my cheek, releasing more heat into the already stifling air. _Concentrate_, I scold myself, _Get to Katniss. Save the Mockingjay. She's the only thing that can save the rebellion now..._ and focus on picking a more exact route to where Katniss must be. Odd, though, she, and her sister have now gone quiet...

Blood now mingles with the sweat pouring down my face, but I barely notice. It's only a scratch. I'll be lucky if that's the only wound I get for the rest of the time in the arena.

I stumble into the clearing almost without noticing, and almost run straight into Katniss, who is standing with her back up against a tree and cleaning blood off one of her arrows with a clump of moss.

"Katniss?" I pant, scanning the clearing for any sign of her sister, or whoever, whatever, she shot the arrow at.

"It's okay. I'm okay," she begins, although I'm not too convinced. From her tone, she's having a hard time believing that herself, and her expression is a mess, "I thought I heard my sister, but-"

And that's when I hear her.

Her voice cuts me dead in my tracks and despite the blazing heat my sweat turns icy cold. In my mind I see her screaming. I see her beautiful green eyes like sun on the sea contorted and dulled with pain. I see the blood matting her flowing auburn hair; see the grim smile of the Game Maker who is standing over her with a knife, torturing her, or the mutt, ripping chunks of flesh for her limbs and face with razor sharp teeth...

I try to cry out in response, but no sound comes. For a moment I stand there, rooted in fear, unable to so much as twitch a finger. Katniss reaches out to me, and I know that she speaks, but I hear no sound save the screams...

And suddenly desperation lends me strength, and I am off, rushing past tree trunks and speeding through nets of creepers in pursuit of that beloved, terrified, agonised voice.

Time slows. It appears that I run for hours, each step becoming slower and more painful than the last, but somehow, my own pain has no real meaning. All that matters is that I get to Annie. The small part of my mind that can still think pushes aside the fact that if I keep going at this pace on this terrain, I will be in no condition to fight once I find her, and I keep going. My breaths come in rasps. Every beat of my heart feels like a knife in the chest. I keep running.

A lifetime of running eventually brings me to another damned tree- this one so wide that were two of us were to spread out arms out and stand either side, our fingertips wouldn't even touch. My ears and heart tell me that I am close, so close that I should be able to see her, but there is not a living thing in sight. I look around desperately, yelling Annie's name at the top of my lungs, despite having no breath to spare, and see still nothing. It sounds as though her voice comes from above, but none could climb this tree; there are no branches for at least twenty feet up.

I don't even notice Katniss has been following me until I hear the faint twangs of a bowstring and see as though in slow motion the black speck fall through the branches an lands with a dull thump right in front of me. It takes me a second to realise that the screaming has stopped, and even longer to put together the fact that whatever it was Katniss shot was making the noise. Not Annie. She isn't here. I'm not sure how I feel about that. Yes, Annie is safe, but what wouldn't I give to hold her in my arms right now and know that we need never be parted again?

After a second to catch my breath and gather my thoughts, I take a shaky step forward and pick up the dead... whatever it is, and realise it's a kind of bird. For an instant my dazed mind thinks it's a Mockingjay, but it takes only an instant for me to realise my mistake.

It's a jabberjay.

My relief swiftly turns to horror as I imagine Annie, poor, scared, half-mad Annie, strapped down in some dark Capitol dungeon with masked men leaning over her and forcing that heart-wrenching, agonising scream from her lips. I see the Jabberjays flocking round her, listening to every cry, and speeding off to the arena, where at four o'clock on the second day, I will be waiting, powerless to stop them from causing the most unimaginable pain to the one I love the most. I see in my mind's eye President Snow's pale lip curled in pleasure and satisfaction. He will pay for this. All of this. I swear to myself that I shall never rest again until I have hunted him down and driven my trident through his heart.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Katniss leap down from a tree with more grace than a gymnast and spring lightly towards me. My expression must be pretty distressed, because as soon as she sees it her brows lower and her tone becomes more soothing and in control that it previously was.

"It's all right, Finnick," She says calmly, and I can tell instantly she doesn't get it yet. "It's just a jabberjay. They're playing a trick on us. It's not real. It's not your Annie." She hesitates before she says the name, as though she knows she's touching a raw spot. I ignore it.

"No." My voice is bitter and savage. I drop kick the carcass away into the trees without even giving Katniss back her arrow, rolling my eyes in disgust. "It's not Annie, but the voice was hers." Katniss' eyes widen as she slowly begins to grasp my meaning. "Jabberjays mimic what they hear. Where did they get those screams, Katniss?" And suddenly she looks just as terrified as I feel.

"Oh, Finnick, you don't think they…"

"Yes. I do. That's exactly what I think." I spit, still unable to get the image of Annie screaming out of my head.

Katniss takes the news like I did, but shows it more obviously. Her knees give way and she sinks in shock to the ground.

"C'mon, Katniss," I urge, kneeling beside her and putting my hand on her shoulder. "You can't help her. You need to focus on getting out of here alive. Then, I swear, we'll..." I trail off, realising what I was about to say. No doubt there's a camera only metres away from my face. Anything I say that even hints at the plan will mean utter disaster and the exposure of the rebel workers in the Capitol, and that must not happen. We're all damned if Snow gets even one wiff of what's really going on.

Another scream, this time farther away to the right, but not Prim's voice, nor Annie's. This is a man's voice, low and rough. No one I know- must be a friend of Katniss'. I grab her arm before she can get up and follow the noise. The only way to end this is to get away from it. We can't fight our own minds.

"No. It's not him." I grunt, pull her too her feet and start off down the hill. "We're getting out of here."

But Katniss still isn't paying me any attention. She fights my strong grip, trying to get back to where the echo of her friend is still screaming.  
"It's not him, Katniss!" This time I yank her arm so hard she stumbles and almost falls, but at least she turns away from the sound of the jabberjay. "It's a mutt! Come on!" and to ensure that this time she really does come, I practically pick her up and half pull, half carry her back down the hill towards the beech. I am certain Peeta will have exactly the right thing to say to get her to calm down.

After a few moments, Katniss stops struggling and cooperates. I'm glad- It's hard enough fighting the wound in my heart without having to try and help someone else at the same time. The only person I want to be helping is Annie. And I can't. That makes me madder than I can say.

I almost whoop with relief as Johanna and Peeta come into sight through the trees, and the forest becomes a little lighter. The beech is only meters away; we can get away from those dreadful birds. I don't stop to think about why Peeta isn't coming to meet Katniss, or why his lips move and no sound is coming out, or about why his hands are held up in front of his face as though pressed against an invisible wall-

Pain explodes all over my body and I can hear the crunch as my nose smacks into the force field. Katniss and I are flung back onto the jungle floor and land, exhausted, winded, and unable to move. After a moment I look up to check Katniss is okay, and see that she only really got hit on the shoulder. It all makes sense. Maybe the jabberjays won't leave their hour, but we won't be leaving it either. I look desperately towards Beetee as Annie's voice pierces the air again, this time screaming my name at the top of her lungs, but Beetee shakes his head sadly, a few feet behind Peeta and Johanna, who are now trying to break their way through with force. There is no way out. We will have to wait for the hour to be up.

An hour.

An hour of listening to Annie scream. This will be the longest hour of my life.

The birds begin to flock in, one by one, crowding around us like vultures rather than songbirds, and each beak screams a different scream. There are a countless number; old, young, male, female, loud and quiet, but only one has any effect on me. It rises above all the others, one long continues sound of pure fear and pain. Annie. My Annie. She will belong dead by now.

A hazy part of my mind wanders who's voices it is the other jabberjays are mimicking. They can't all be friends and family of Katniss, can they?

_You're lucky_, I think savagely, glaring at Katniss who still hasn't given up, and is shooting arrow after arrow at the cloud of black terror flying above our heads._ You only won last year. The Capitol haven't had time to kill off those you love. All of these people care about you. You still have all these people left who love you. I've only got one- Annie._

My Annie.

I curl up in a ball and begin to weep.

* * *

AN: I guess I can no longer use the excuse of 'this is my first fanfic' to justify my bad writing...

Here's the part why I explain the lack of method in my madness...

Basically, before I started using this website to publish Fanfiction, I used Movellas. The only reason I stopped is because of the rather extensive of Harry Styles and Justin Bieber fics, and because I have this chronic allergy to One Direction (YOU THINK I'M JOKING BUT I'M NOT- I HAVE LEGITIMATELY THROWN UP TWICE IN FRONT OF 1D POSTERS WHEN OUT SHOPPING WITH FRIENDS. Seriously. Ask them.) and because I am an SPN fan and am therefore at war with Biebelievers I felt that it was time for me to move out further into the world wide web. Ahem.

(Just to keep my claims of 'First ever fanfic' for _The Tale of the Eledwen_ open, even though I used Movellas previously to publish fics, TTOTE was still the first thing I published, and even then only in supreme draft form, and I got about zero feedback... So I'm still fairly new to this whole fanfic thing. Hence my incessant ramblings. Shutting up now.)

So yeah, I had Movellas, and at around the time that Catching Fire came out, they did this Hunger Games fanfiction competition, which I entered, because believe it or not at the time I had free time on my hands and figured I needed a break from continuously writing the Epic scale thing that is _The Tale of the Eledwen_ (I've mentioned that before: Just so you know that's another of my fics. It's LOTR. If you have a spare FOUR HOURS take a peak at the first chapter for me. But be warned- the word count it 12,000+ and I have only two published chapters for it...)I didn't win. Not hard to see why. But I had a lot of fun writing it, so hey. :) I figured it was more use to me here, being read(*Nervous laugh*) than sitting gathering dust at the bottom of my 'Misc' folder in Evernote...

Please take the time to review. Obviously I am just starting out as writer (type thing) and would cherish feedback, be it positive or negative. But please be nice. Use long words and pretty vocabulary. Those sort of things get you extra brownie points with me.

Yours,

Aniron xxx

* * *

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters, settings or plot points in the above fic. All names, places, etc belong to either Suzanne Collins or Lionsgate. I do not write for profit, only for my own enjoyment and (hopefully...?) the enjoyment of others. So yeah. Don't sue me. I don't have money to give you anyways, so you won't get much out of it if you do decide to...


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